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Current Bullard Recipients

Harvard Forest is pleased to announce the 2017-2018 Charles Bullard Fellows in Forest Research. The purpose of this Fellowship program, established in 1962, is to support advanced research and study by persons who show promise of making important contributions, either as scholars or administrators, to forestry defined in its broadest sense as the human use and study of forested environments.

"The Harvard community benefits immensely from the presence of the outstanding scholars and fellows supported by the Bullard program," says David R. Foster, director of Harvard Forest and chair of the Bullard Fellowship committee. "The breadth of research encompassed by this year's class of scholars is vast, ranging from sustainable forest management to computer science, from cell biology to reconstructions of past environmental change."

2017-2018 Charles Bullard Fellows:

Noah Charney, a Research Associate at the University of Arizona, will be writing a book during his Bullard Fellowship, that bridges natural history with academia by telling captivating ecological narratives of richly storied field sites. This project reflects Noah's multi-disciplinary work teaching natural history, directing a conservation nonprofit (Radnor to River, Nashville TN), authoring nature guides, and publishing basic research on wildlife ecology, evolution and climate change. As a Bullard Fellow, Noah will interface with several aspects of the Forest's long term ecological research, conservation initiatives, and educational mission. His primary collaborator will be HF Director David Foster.

Isabelle Chuine, CNRS Research Director at the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle & Evolutive in France, focuses on the phenology and ecological niches of forest trees, particularly on the factors that determine the timing of their development. She works to identify the key traits that allow a particular species to adapt to its environment and the constraints on its genetic evolution. Her Bullard project will tackle the ongoing challenge of providing robust forecasts of climate change impacts on forest phenology, and therefore on the trees' functions and ecosystem services. Her primary collaborator during her fellowship will be Elizabeth Wolkovich in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Guillermo Goldstein from the University of Miami will focus his Bullard Fellowship on tree survival in habitats with frequent subzero temperatures during winter (including those in New England)﻿, seeking to determine how xylem rays and other living stem tissues remain alive and avoid crystal damage in these low temperatures. It is hypothesized that pits and pit membranes are helpful in constraining ice formation to xylem conduits, thus avoiding ice propagation into living cells. To conduct this research, he will interact with several research groups at Harvard.

Nicole St. Clair Knobloch is a Project Leader for the New England Forestry Foundation's "Build It with Wood" program. Her Bullard Fellowship work will investigate which of the conservation funding and finance mechanisms identified in the Wildlands and Woodlands conservation report might appeal to developers, while also exploring new ways for them to invest in working forests. She will also seek to identify how regions still committed to working lands, but vulnerable to perforating development through subdivisions and second homes, might revive an economy less dependent on real estate through the revival of forest products industries and development of income through conservation. The project focuses on three areas of Massachusetts with distinct demographics and conservation threats: Metro West Boston, which represents deforestation in a wealthy urban edge/suburban area due to economic growth; Southeast Worcester County, where current working farms and unprotected forest are threatened by residential development for income; and Berkshire County, which is experiencing forest perforation due to the building of second homes.

Maureen Puettmann, owner of WoodLife Environmental Consultants, has been performing life cycle assessments (LCAs) on renewable materials for over 20 years. Maureen is also the Chief Operating Officer of the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) where she supports CORRIM's mission is to establish, support, and manage research and education programs relating to renewable industrial materials focused on the environmental impact of the production, use, and disposal of wood and other bio-based materials. Her fellowship at Harvard Forest will provide a comprehensive summary and LCA of the environmental impacts of the Forest's new wood heating system, including carbon balances and global warming impacts. She will primarily be working with Audrey Barker-Plotkin, forester and coordinator of the Forest's Long-Term Ecological Research Program, and John Wisniewski, head of the HF Woods Crew.

Crystal Schaaf, Professor in the School for the Environment at UMass Boston, models surface albedo and reflectance anisotropy from remotely sensed imagery in order to reconstruct and monitor the canopy attributes, vegetation phenology, and land surface change of terrestrial ecosystems. She is also involved in the development and use of ground-based lidar systems to characterize vegetation structure and biomass and to improve these characterizations through the fusion of terrestrial lidar data with aerial and spaceborne lidar observations and imagery. During her Bullard Fellowship, she will couple the extensive forestry field data available with remotely sensed observations to investigate the complex structural changes underway in Northeast forest canopies due to the ongoing infestation of the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid. Her main collaborator at the Forest will be Forest Ecologist David Orwig.

Eric Washburn, President of Windward Strategies in Colorado, will use his background in conservation policy, communications, and forest ecology, to collaborate with Harvard Forest researchers on a Bullard project to educate state and federal policymakers and the public about the major stresses that will determine the state of U.S. forests in the future. The centerpiece of this work will be a book on the future of American forests that draws on the published scientific work of Harvard Forest as well as contributions by other strategic partners to help advance the Wildlands and Woodlands conservation initiative, raising its national profile and improving its chances of securing the financial resources and policies needed to achieve its vision for New England forests.